ATLANTA – Anyone who is traveling abroad and looking to pay his or her respects to the nation’s fallen heroes of World War I and World War II can do so at a number of memorials and cemeteries worldwide.
The American Battle Monuments Commission runs 24 cemeteries in 14 countries and oversees 25 memorials or momuments, including three located in the United States. The cemeteries are the final resting place of 125,000 soldiers “who never made it back just so we could live our lives here,” American Battle Monuments Commission Secretary Max Cleland said in an interview following a recent appearance before the Atlanta Press Club.
Cleland suggested that anyone traveling to Paris drive about three-and-a-half hours north of the city to Normandy to experience “our incredible monument to sacrifice and courage.” Roughly 1.5 million Americans visit the cemetery every year, and the new Normandy visitors center “interprets the entire battle and the service and sacrifice and courage that was exhibited there” during the D-Day landings on Normandy’s beaches, Cleland said.
“This is not just a memorial,” Cleland said. “These are actual men who lost their lives in battle.”
Cleland said the best time to visit is between June and August.
In the Pacific, Cleland suggested travelers see the Honolulu Punchbowl Cemetery. While the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs runs the cemetery, the American Battle Monuments Commission is in charge of the Memorial of the Pacific, a monument that includes the names of 18,000 soldiers who went missing in the Pacific during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
“It will give you some cold chills to go there and realize how much this country has spent in blood abroad,” Cleland said.
Congress established the American Battle Monuments Commission in 1923. Cleland, a decorated Vietnam veteran, served as a U.S. Senator from Georgia from 1997 to 2003 and has been secretary of the commission since 2009.
